Wireless communication systems have become ubiquitous in society. Business and consumers use a wide variety of fixed and mobile wireless terminals, including cell phones, pagers, Personal Communication Services (PCS) systems, and fixed wireless access devices (i.e., vending machine with cellular capability). Wireless service providers continually try to create new markets for wireless devices and expand existing markets by making wireless devices and services cheaper and more reliable. The price of wireless devices has decreased to the point where these devices are affordable to nearly everyone and the price of a wireless device is only a small part of the total cost to the user (i.e., subscriber). To continue to attract new customers, wireless service providers are implementing new services, especially digital data services that, for example, enable a user to browse the Internet and to send and receive e-mail.
Conventional wireless networks provide packet data call services using control signals that connect the base station (BS) serving the mobile station (MS) that originates a packet data call to a packet data serving node (PDSN). All data transmitted by the source mobile station is transferred through the PDSN into a packet data network, such as the Internet. Unfortunately, conventional wireless networks do not support packet data call services in which the packet data call is terminated on a mobile station. Prior art mobile stations are only capable of originating packet data calls.
Therefore, there is a need for packet data services in a wireless network that are more flexible and more user-friendly. In particular, there is a need in the art for wireless networks that support mobile station-terminated packet data services. More particularly, there is a need for wireless networks that provide mobile station-to-mobile station (MS-MS) packet data connections.